'We are absolutely in a new culture war': 'Religious freedom' next on the Liberal agenda

On Monday night, former deputy prime minister John Anderson delivered a rousing and ominous speech to a gathering of religious educators in Parliament House. With a gusto more suited to the Great Hall in which the Christian Schools Australia gala dinner normally takes place, Anderson dared speak the name of a spectre which is often invoked but rarely acknowledged: the culture war.

"We’re living in the age of enormous cultural disharmony, I put it to you," he told his audience of principals, lobbyists and MPs. There was a "battle in our culture" between a classic version of freedom and the "latter day, politically correct" incarnation, he said, and "they can't both win".

Illustration: Matt Golding

Hubris had replaced modesty in Australia, Anderson lamented. "The dominant cultural ethos seems to have changed enormously ... there’s an enormous smugness now in the public debate and an enormous price to pay if you dare to disagree."

The 61-year-old served for six years as deputy PM to John Howard, another culture warrior whose lasting impact on Australia is still maligned by progressives. And Anderson, like Howard, invests great hope that a forthcoming review of religious freedom headed by their former cabinet colleague Philip Ruddock will mark a turning point in what they regard as a war that is being lost to the left.

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The review was a consolation prize for conservative MPs bitter about the legalisation of same-sex marriage and concerned - at least ostensibly - about the impact on religious practice and belief. But others are suspicious of the "religious freedom" mantra, arguing the law already grants too much power to churches to hire and fire on personal grounds. They fear an attempt to break down and override anti-discrimination laws.

Ruddock's report has been handed to Malcolm Turnbull and his Attorney-General, Christian Porter. We don't yet know what it says, but it will not be entirely toothless: it will recommend changes to the law. It also won't be revolutionary. We know this because Ruddock has said he believes religious freedom is already well-protected in this country, and almost everyone agrees with that.

Despite this, the issue of religious freedom has proven to be a rallying cry for conservatives in the Liberal Party, underpinned by future leadership ambitions. Treasurer Scott Morrison, a committed Christian, led the charge last year for the same-sex marriage bill to give ground to faith demands. Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton pushed to delay the debate until this year, and won. He was out of the blocks last week, the day the review was handed to the Prime Minister, calling for religious schools to keep their rights to hire staff and teach the curriculum in accordance with their values.

These rights are already enjoyed. And when you talk to conservative Liberals about what they want from this review, you start to understand it is not about change but protecting the status quo from assault by the left and state governments.

Assistant Home Affairs Minister Alex Hawke, who watched Anderson's speech at Monday's sit-down dinner, is refreshingly honest when he tells Fairfax Media that Australia is "absolutely" in the middle of "a new culture war".

"The Labor Party is pursuing a militant secularist agenda," Hawke says. "It's a fundamental shift in Australian politics and we're struggling to catch up on the conservative side. We're really behind the eight ball now."

Hawke says the religious freedom review will "spell out how we can move forward". "We're all waiting for the review but we do want to see at a federal level that when the states use anti-discrimination law to overstep the mark that they're unable to restrict people's rights in this space."

The Turnbull government is no stranger to a culture war. Even after Tony Abbott abandoned plans to change section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, Turnbull tried again, but was stymied by the Senate. Conservatives were granted a review of the contentious Safe Schools program, designed to address bullying of LGBTI students but maligned by culture warriors as Marxism-by-stealth. There is the ongoing attack on councils, which take a different view on Australia Day. Even the budget fired a shot in the battle by cutting $84 million from the ABC while allocating $50 million for a commemoration of Captain Cook's landing.

Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar, a rising-star conservative who could be described as one of the Liberal Party's newer cultural warriors, plays down talk of an internal fissure over religious freedom.

"I can't really see there being that much daylight between most Liberals on freedom," he tells Fairfax Media. "Basically we all agree on the importance of religious freedom, the question is how you do it.

"We don't want anyone to suffer a detriment by virtue of religious observance or a traditional view on marriage. That includes institutions like schools having all of the rights that they currently have, and parents having control over what their children are taught. Basically, enshrining the freedoms we have always enjoyed."

That's the sort of talk that makes Luke Beck, an associate professor of constitutional law at Monash University, wonder why we ever had the $1 million Ruddock review in the first place. "What exactly is it that these fringe religious groups want to do that they’re not currently allowed to do?" he asks. "I can’t really think of anything."

But Beck - who specialises in the separation of church and state - does see value in a new national protection from discrimination for religion. While this is already granted in most states, there are gaps in the law in NSW and South Australia.

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"Technically if you're at a cafe in NSW you could say 'we don’t serve coffee to Muslims'," says Beck. "It’s a gap that needs filling. But I’m not sure there are many cases of this happening."

Patrick Parkinson, a law professor at the University of Sydney, approaches the issue from directly the opposite position as Beck. He lobbies MPs from both major parties on behalf of Freedom for Faith, a Christian legal think tank. His comments about the Ruddock review at a conference this week intrigued and irked secularists.

"I have been kept closely in touch with the Ruddock inquiry," he said, according to the Eternity News. "I have been kept informed by the Prime Minister’s office and we have been making progress. It is a glass-half-full situation. Will we get all that we would like? No."

Parkinson did not want to expand on those remarks. But he did assert the aftermath of the Ruddock review would not amount to a "grand final rematch" of the fight over same-sex marriage - that fight was over. But the marriage debate "was to some extent a proxy for a much wider range of fears and concerns about freedom of conscience, thought and belief", he said.

"Values about marriage and family life are just a subset of a broader set of beliefs and values," Parkinson said. "People are deeply concerned in part because of what they hear about in other Western nations in which freedoms can no longer be taken for granted."